But What of Digitizing the Stores Themselves?
What would this mean? A local digitization project? Hardly! A collection development policy which
says buy as much electronic access to digital versions of what you hold in store as you can afford and
discard the print versio ns as part of this process? Probably! But at what cost? No contingency cover in
the case of cancelled subscriptions or a company going out of business? No archival access to the years
for which you have already subscribed? No limit fields in search engines which allow such access on an
ongoing / ownership basis? At least with a print copy you are left long term with something tangible.
And what of dependence on digitized products as a means of setting the cost of access for the future, of
sculpting who could access? Are there cost implications in an ongoing migration of data to ever changing
storage media? In maintaining the scope of a library’s access to knowledge as price structures
change? In sustaining continuous investment in forever upgrading software and equipment to access
such media? So is it wise to abandon print holdings in favour of electronic access? To cut the tether?
The wisdom of heritage and preservation would perhaps say no. Yes, have access/ availability in digital
form but keep the print archive safe. But then again the wisdom I’m talking about is the wisdom of a
print heritage, a print culture. How might the wisdom of a digital heritage / preservation culture in some
future time respond?